the magic of the Blue Mountains doesn'tlie in their height it lies in their depthyou know you descend the hundred meters in in altitude and but you'veeffectively gone back a hundred million years in time they're just magicalplaces that you won't find anywhere else this is about a two-hour drive
from thecenter of Sydney so the Blue Mountains world heritagearea was created in 2000 by UNESCO the United Nations cultural body all thecountries of the world have recognized that this place here has universalvalues it's important to all of humanity not just to Australiansit's made up of eight different national
parks and conservation areas really overa million hectares and within that area there's just an amazing diversity ofdifferent ecosystems many millions of people come to the Blue Mountains everyyear as tourists most of them don't get any further thanthe lookout at the top and they're looking out over these beautiful
placesbut for me to truly experience the magic of the Blue Mountains you've got to getdown into their depths that's why slot canyon e is for mine the perfect way tosee the Blue Mountains we always go through our gear list here to make surethat we've we've got everything we
need all right let's go do it force Canyonyeah guys let's do it yes so if you just have a smell of thatyeah so tea tree oil it has amazing and sceptic qualities gets used in a lot ofcosmetics and washing products and so on these days and yeah excellent
to put ona cutter or something like that with you all right time to get wet and whoa let'sdo it what makes this Canyon great is thatit's very accessible by Blue Mountains Canyon standards only about a half hourwalk down to the canyon and it's not a long Canyon but
it's got everything youwant you know wet canyons to watch what he does here well fantastic jumpsbeautiful scenery and then the awesome crescendo at the end is this abseil downa 30 meter waterfall so guys if we send anything over the edge that we didn'tmean to send over the edge
we are going to shout rock at the top of our voiceeven if I drop this the shout is Rock okay if you hear that shout what you'vegot to do is fight your natural human instinct which is to look up becausethen you could eat a carabiner yeah and you
don't want to do that one of the best parts about canyoning istaking your wet shoes off at the end of a trip from as young as I can remember Ihad the boys right at my backdoor and after school straight out the door downthe bush mucking around building cubbies
you know swimming in the creek all thatsort of stuff then I was a journalist for 25 years at The Sydney MorningHerald the leading newspaper in Sydney and I feel totally blessed to have hadreally two careers that I've loved for me they're actually very closely linkedbecause I think to
be a good guide you've got to be a good communicator andyou've got to have that first foreknowledge so that you can you canshare all the knowledge you have with your crime a lot of people who come tothe Blue Mountains they wonder how it got its name and the
eucalyptus dropsand the moisture droplets that are in the air the light hits them and bouncesoff them and it creates a very vivid blue so yesterday we did a wet canyonwhich is empress falls canyon and they're the canyons we like to do in thewarmer part of the year but
when the weather turns cold like today as you cansee I'm pretty rugged up we would rather go and do dry canyons dry canyonsthey're still beautiful things that have been carved out by the same sort ofprocesses as the wet canyons but you're able to move through them without goingfor
a swim which means they're much more pleasant to do on a day like today okaygirls so we're going to take a hike into tiger snake Canyon here it's one of themost beautiful winter canyons dry canyons that we do here in the BlueMountains we've got about an hour's walk
in and then we're gonna be in abeautiful section of slot canyon we are about to do our first app sale sowe need to think about safety okay so just a few basic things this helmet nowalways stays on okay don't take it off unless you ask it's okay whereverpossible
we want to have our feet flat on the surface at least shoulder widthapart to give us really good stability like so okay just drop down into thatslot and then look for some footholds down below so let your feet drop belowyour Daly's and just watch that other hand doesn't
get trapped under the road so I've done this Canyon a few dozentimes now and it never gets old 100 million years ago as the tectonicplates of the earth were shifting and groaning they started to push all thissandstone up to become what we call the Blue Mountains today even
the great American writer MarkTwain came to Australia back in the 1890s and this is what he had to sayabout when he came to the Blue Mountains it was a stunning color that blue deepstrong rich exquisite towering and majestic masses of blue a softlyluminous blue a smoldering blue as
if vaguely lit by fires within itextinguished the blue of the sky made it powered and an unwholesome whitey andwashed out a wonderful color just divine so when you come visit us be sure totread lightly leave nothing but footprints take nothing but memories Ilook forward to seeing you in
the Blue Mountains